Homework
by bellagill92
Summary: Had Natsu known how much trouble he was going to get into for letting his brother's ghost tutor his kid in school stuff, he might have felt a tad less avert to sitting down and helping her with her homework.


**A/N: I know I have sort of been MIA for a while, but I have been working overtime to cover for a colleague who's on sick leave. I feel like I don't have the time to do much beyond working, eating and sleeping. Hopefully things will settle down soon (though the extra dough does come in handy...).**

 **Anyway, this fic sort of follows my previous one-shots "Brotherhood" and "Namesake" - you don't _have_ to read them, but it would help a lot with the backstory.**

"Daddy? Can you help me with homework?"

Natsu had grimaced at the question the moment he'd heard of it from his eldest child upon picking her up from school. The word alone had had him breaking into cold sweats – _homework_. The bane of his existence from ages ten to sixteen, made even worse by Erza making him do it at sword-point more often than not. He had thought he was done with that part of his life, but with Lucy, who usually took care of that stuff, on a Spa trip with a bunch of other moms from the guild and not due back until the end of the week, it didn't seem like he'd have a choice…

As such, he had no way of avoiding his ultimate fate of sitting there at a table at home not ten minutes later stressing over elementary school math problems while his two youngest kids napped oblivious to his plight. It was hell. Pure hell.

"How much is eight times seven?"

The question made his skin crawl. "Er... sixty-something? Can't you just write that down?"

The pink-haired little girl frowned. "No! That's not a number, Daddy."

"Just... give me a second, Ig-chan. I'm thinking." What was it? Sixty-one? Sixty-three?

Young Igraine Dragneel didn't seem impressed. "I thought all grownups were supposed to know this stuff by heart."

Natsu made a face. "What for? Everyone knows that math has no point in real life! You don't see numbers just walking around, do you? So why should you know so much about them?!"

"Oh, dear. I shudder to think of how you must balance your household funds..." said a voice he had not been expecting to hear.

Nearly jumping out of his chair, Natsu turned around to spot his brother (or rather, his ghost) standing behind him, looking rather unimpressed. It should be noted that he had never, ever _ever_ seen his late brother outside of Tenrou Island after his death. "The hell?!"

"Uncle!" little Igraine shouted in excitement. "You're here!"

"I believe I have had a standing invitation to visit for the past few years."

"Yeah, but you never use it, you bastard!" Natsu accused him, eagerness disguised as outrage. "Lucy and I always end up having to pack up kids and all and head to Tenrou Island if we want a chance of laying eyes on your sorry mug! What finally changed your mind?"

"Mavis was very... insistent." There might have been tantrums involved. Extremely loud ones at that. He wondered if her sudden inclination to have him visiting Fairy Tail had something to do with the recent tenth anniversary of his death – maybe she had deemed a decade a long enough period for his exile. And when faced with fits and pouts that had every single creature in the island giving him a cold-shoulder (from mice to thirty-foot-tall beasts), who was he to question her? "That is beside the point, though. I believe Igraine asked a question and that the correct answer is, in fact, fifty-six."

Natsu looked confused while his daughter turned to him looking utterly enraged. "You said it was sixty-something, Daddy!"

"I wasn't that much off-mark!" he protested. "Come-on, you two!"

Zeref sighed. "Your disregard for your education will never cease to baffle me, Natsu."

"Hey! It's not my fault you got all the brains!"

"Somehow, I doubt it is a matter of stupidity – your battle strategies can be genial sometimes. As far as I can tell, you simply don't stimulate your intellect enough – your brain needs just as much exercise as your body, else it will reflect in your understanding of things," his brother explained.

Natsu made a face. "Meh… I'll pass. I don't like that kind of exercise. Lucy can just be the smart one between the two of us. She's good at it."

Zeref sighed, looking disappointed. So much wasted potential… so much…

"Uncle," little Igraine said. "Since Daddy is dumb, can _you_ help me with homework? You're smart, right? Like Mommy."

"Hey! What the hell?! I'm your Dad, Ig-chan! You can't just call me dumb!" Natsu said to his daughter, positively horrified at being talked down by his grade-school daughter, or all people.

"You brought it upon yourself," Zeref told him, utterly pitiless before looking down at his niece. So refreshingly eager to learn – she reminded him of a young Natsu, before his death had somewhat shifted the gears of his brain towards living and breathing all things fight-related. At the end, he blamed himself. "And yes, Igraine, I would be happy to help you not following your father's footsteps in what comes to scholarly work."

"Great! Do you know about history too? 'Cause Mommy usually explains it ahead to me before they teach it at school. Can you do the same?"

"Of course, I would be happy to explain as many historical facts as you need me to," he turned to Natsu, who seemed to be slowly retreating out of the room. "Do feel free to stay, Natsu. You might enjoy learning a thing or two." Maybe it wasn't too late to make up for the lost time and educate his younger brother…

Natsu did not agree, though. "Er… I have this thing with… er…" He paused to think for a moment. And then, his mind lit up like a light as the idea hit him. "The kids! The other kids, I mean. Gotta go and see is Nashi is awake and up to something. Lucy will kill me if she ends up drawing all over Haru with a sharpie while he sleeps on my watch… again. So, yeah, unless you want more company in Tenrou Island, I'm off – good luck nerding it up!"

Zeref sighed, covering his face with his hand completely devoid of hope. Their parents must be rolling in their graves.

"Uncle?" Igraine called.

He turned around and saw her sitting patiently waiting for him to give her some attention. "Ah, yes, Igraine. Your studies… let us see to your mathematical skills."

He was actually fairly decent, not to mention captivating, at explaining it to an elementary-level child without over-complicating things too much. Igraine certainly seemed invested enough that she finished homework in less than half an hour and went on to study twenty pages ahead of planned in her textbook under her uncle's tutelage. At the end, it went on for hours (on the first of which Natsu had snuck out of the window with the two other kids, feeling somewhat oppressed by the learning aura that he could feel around the house – if Zeref had had any doubt that there was no hope for his brother, he instantly shed it at that moment).

"You're really smart, Uncle," little Igraine told him. "Can't you stay and do homework with me every day? It's easier when you explain it."

"This is my first outing from the island – I doubt I will have the power to stay away from it very long. And I am sure your mother provides enough help when she is home. She may not have the scholarly background our side of the family does but she rubs me as quite the intelligent woman."

"Mommy is super smart too but you explain it better. Like a real teacher," she added before looking thoughtful. "Were you a teacher when you were alive?"

Never one of anything good, he thought. His niece, due to her tender age, knew next to nothing about his dark background… which by extension made her know nothing but vague notions concerning his past: being her uncle, having died but somehow manifested in the world of the living by some supernatural power, living with Master Mavis in Tenrou Island since his death… and that was it. "I think I would have been a teacher, had I made different choices in my past," Zeref mused. It wouldn't have been odd for a student to progress into a teacher at the Academy… although never a student who broke every single taboo of magic ever created.

"You should have been one," she told him. "You're good at it."

"Maybe. But the past is in the past, my dear niece, and nothing will change that," he told her. "As it stands, I am content with contributing for your education. Which brings us to the point where I believe you wanted me to help you with your history studies as well."

"Ah, yes!" She reached down into her schoolbag and grabbed her colorful history text book, spreading it open in front of him on a particular page. "That's what we're gonna learn next. The Dragon King Festival!"

Zeref gave a little nod of recognition, his mind focused on reading the very simplistic account that the book reported. He frowned. No, not just simplistic. Downright inaccurate. "Please turn the page, Igraine," he asked of his niece, unable to command his incorporeal body to do so itself.

The little girl obeyed immediately and his frown deepened. That time, she noticed it. "Why do you look mad, Uncle?"

"I am not mad as much as baffled. It's quite shocking how wrong textbooks can get things sometimes…"

"Eh? You mean the book is wrong?" As the daughter of a wannabe writer and goddaughter of an avid reader, Igraine had been thought from a very early age about the wisdom of books. To learn that was one wrong was… shocking. She believed her uncle without question though, not even having to ask how her uncle knew when it had happened so long ago when she had no idea he had been alive back then – as far as she was concerned, her uncle seemed smarter than her mother and since her mother was _really_ smart, then he must be inhumanly so.

"Very much so… to think they would publish such nonsense… editors must have become rather lax with the passing of time," he mumbled, before turning to his niece. "Would you like me to tell you what _really_ happened in Dragon King Festival, Igraine?"

She nodded eagerly. "Yes! I've got to warn my teacher that the book is wrong!"

Zeref seemed satisfied with her answer. "Wonderful. Then do seat back. This is quite the long story…"

 _That_ was when the trouble started.

* * *

Two days later, just hours before Lucy was due back and half a day after Zeref had needed to return to Tenrou Island, Natsu was summoned to his daughter's school after classes by the teacher. When he walked into the classroom where the middle-aged woman waited, she looked grim and outright scary… well, maybe the scary part was mostly due to his bias against all things school-related.

"Has your daughter explained why you have been called here, Mr. Dragneel?" the woman asked.

"She s…said you wanted to talk to me about school stuff," he mumbled, feeling rather intimidated by the woman. He kept looking around, expecting her to pull out a pop quiz or write down an equation for him to solve on the chalkboard. If she actually resorted to that, he's burst out of there faster than she could call his name.

"I'm told that your brother is visiting," she stated. "And that he has been helping Igraine with her school work."

Somehow, the shift towards a less evaluation-oriented subject made him relax considerably. "Oh, yeah," he said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment. "You see, I'm not very good with school stuff and Ig-chan needed help, so when he showed up, he just sorta… took over. He's kind of a genius. All brainy and stuff."

The teacher nodded. "I will admit that his help was invaluable in what came to maths. Igraine was struggling with her multiplications before. I was planning to tutor her in a more one-on-one capacity today but when I got to her, she seemed perfectly comfortable with them. According to her, it was due to her uncle's assistance."

Natsu grinned. He might not like studying himself but Ig-chan didn't seem to share that trait with him and thinking of Zeref invested into something… well, it was pretty nice. "That's great. So, you just called me here to tell me that my brother is an awesome tutor?"

The teacher's face froze. "Hardly. Although his math tutoring was without a doubt extremely productive for your daughter, Mr. Dragneel, the same cannot be said in what comes to History. Tell me, is your brother some sort of historian, by any chance? Perhaps one studying the period surrounding the Dragon King Festival?"

"What? No way! All he does these days is spending all day napping or looking at clouds in Tenrou Island," Natsu dismissed it immediately. "He also babysits a lot." By which he meant the First.

The woman frowned. "Well, then I believe a long talk with your brother concerning the usage of tall tales would be in order."

"T… tall tales?" The thought of Zeref having anything to do with such a thing simply did not compute in his mind.

"Children are quite naïve at Igraine's age, Mr. Dragneel. They will believe just about anything they are told by an authority figure. I understand wanting to… spice up history a little in order to create interest, but one needs to be clear about what is reality and what is fiction."

"Fiction?"

"Yes. Your brother, seems to have put it in little Igraine's mind that every single historian who studied the Dragon King Festival is wrong by spinning a very colorful tale of his own making," the teacher stated, unimpressed. "For instance, in his version of events, rather than the cause of the conflict being dragons generally seeing humans as prey and humans attempting to defend themselves, as every single history book states, it was, in fact, a clash of ideals between the dragons, in which one faction wished to spare humans while the other didn't, that led to war breaking. Then, he went on to develop the notion that the pro-human faction created Dragon Slayerd by teaching humans how to use magic that could defeat dragons. But as if that wasn't enough, your brother decided to add an extra twist to the story: the fact that Dragon Slayer magic can lead to humans mutating into dragons which was, according to the story, the making of the Black Dragon known as Acnologia. _Acnologia,_ " she repeated for emphasis.

Natsu blinked, a little confused. Why was the woman so shocked? And why did she sound so… disbelieving? "But that's exactly what happened." He hardly ever paid enough attention to anything even remotely related to history, but _that_ was certainly one of the few things that had stuck to his mind. How could she think it wrong like that?

The woman looked at him like he was insane. "Mr. Dragneel, I understand wanting to support with your brother's actions, but surely you don't mean…"

"It wasn't even that guy who told me about all that stuff," Natsu told her. "It was this jerk of a Dragon a bunch of years ago."

"A…a d-dragon?" the woman stammered. "Surely you know that dragons have been extinct for centuries!"

Natsu groaned. "Why do people keep saying that?! It's so annoying… Anyway, that's not the point, I guess, since it wasn't even a living dragon who told it to me."

The teacher blinked. "Not a living dragon… then that would make it… a dead one?"

"Well, yeah. Fairy Tail is a wizard's guild and all sorts of awesome stuff happens with magic. Anyway, I have this friend who can summon spirits of dead Dragons and the first time she did it, this really annoying one came and told us all that stuff."

She was conflicted at that point. The man did have a point about magic and its never-ending possibilities, but the story still seems all sorts of strange. She just couldn't bring herself to buy it so easily. "And by 'us' you mean yourself and your brother."

"Oh, no. I mean me and my friends. My brother and I didn't get along very well at the time," Natsu pointed out. Understatement of the century. "But I guess he probably already knew that, being there and all."

The awkward silence that formed after that statement lasted for several seconds. "When you say 'being there' concerning your brother…"

"I mean _there_. You know, at the festival thingy."

"Four hundred years ago," the woman provided, looking at him in disbelief.

"Sure," he said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

There was again about ten seconds of silence. And then. "I see… so your brother's magic is somehow… time-travel related?"

"What? That's crazy – there's no such thing as time-travel magic," Natsu informed his daughter's teacher, looking at her like she was insane. "Nah, Zeref's magic is just the super morbid kind."

And that time the silence was much… much longer… and tenser… The teacher stared at him as she slowly pushed the chair she was sitting on backwards, trying to make herself an exit. Her insanity alarms were starting to ring. "Your brother is named after Z… _the_ Black Wizard himself?"

Natsu frowned. It wasn't like he'd gone shouting it out of roofs or anything, but he had never really made a point of keeping his blood relation to Zeref a secret. People just didn't ask, so he never got around telling… until that day. "Named after him? No way! He didn't become infamous until he was like… I don't know how old he was, but obviously he wasn't named after _himself._ That would be just stupid."

The woman nearly choked. "So, what you are saying, Mr. Dragneel, is that your b-brother… Igraine's uncle… is… Black Wizard Zeref." _Please say no. Please!_

Natsu made a face. "Do you have to keep calling him 'Black Wizard'? He has a name: it's Zeref. Well, Zeref _Dragneel_ , I guess. If you want to be all polite about it, I guess you could go with Mr. Dragneel too… oh, but wait, that's what you call me, so that would be confusing. Yeah, just go with Zeref…"

The poor, poor teacher was pale as a sheet by then. As far as she was concerned, she was listening to the ramblings of a very disturbed man. "Mr. Dragneel, I am not sure what you're trying to pull, but surely you realize that… _Zeref lived centuries ago!_ Surely that makes it… implausible for anyone to believe that you would be related so closely with such a… tremendous age gap…"

"It's not that big a gap," Natsu mumbled. "The way he explained it, originally I was only a handful of years younger than him, but then there was that whole thing about me dying and him going all crazy to bring me back… it's a long story. I won't bore you with the details."

 _Bore her with the details?!_ the teacher thought. The man was a public danger… probably just some delusional worshiper of Zeref's… to think Salamander of Fairy Tail had gone down that path… Oh, god, she needed to get out of that room. She needed to call the cops… better yet, the asylum people to get that man off the streets!

As such, she got to her feet, trying to look as calm as possible. "Mr. Dragneel… could you wait here a second while I go outside and… sort something out?"

"As long as you're not looking for a quiz or something…" he agreed.

"Of course not. You can rest on that," she assured him before stepping out from behind the desk and making a beeline for the door like her life depended on it.

It was only once she was outside that she allowed herself a breath of relief… that is, until she heard her name being called… by the wife of the poor, poor soul inside her office.

As she faced the end of the hall, Lucy Dragneel came running in her direction, looking like she had rushed all the way there.

"Oh, thank God I… made it," she said, short of breath. "I've just… returned from a trip and… my friends told me you'd… called Natsu for a meeting. Is he gone already?"

The teacher looked at her for a moment. If she had to guess, it seemed as if the wife was utterly oblivious about her husband's issues. Maybe it was an acute thing… hopefully it was solvable. Still, she hated to be the one to break the news… to one of her favorite parents, even – so involved and well read… As such, she tried to be as sensible as possible. She gave Lucy her best 'everything will be okay face' and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Mrs. Dragneel… I'm afraid your husband is a very sick man. He needs help – urgent professional help."

Lucy's eyebrow twitched. That wasn't a good sign.

* * *

"You idiot!" Lucy screamed for the hundredth time that day as they stood outside the classroom, whacking him with her bag in the process.

"Stop hitting me!" Natsu replied, covering himself with his arms.

"You deserve it, you complete _moron_! What were you thinking telling a schoolteacher about your brother like that?!"

"What's the big deal?! We're brothers! He may be kind of nuts sometimes but I'm not ashamed of him!"

"It's not an issue of being ashamed or not!" she whispered furiously, looking around to make sure they weren't being overheard. "It's an issue of saying it out loud to people who don't know the whole story making you sound like one of his whackjob followers! Do you have any idea how many morons a year claim they are his long-lost brother/son/great-great-grandchild/third-cousin-of-his-gardner's-wife?"

"That's stupid. Why would people do that if it's not true?"

"Because they're crazy – that's why!"

Just as she finished saying that, the classroom door opened and Mest-who-used-to-be-Doranbolt-who-used-to-be-Mest stepped out. "It's done," he told Lucy. "She won't remember a thing about Zeref after she wakes up. She'll just think that she lectured Natsu about something random and let him go."

Lucy let out a breath of relief. "Thank you so much! You've just saved me from a lifetime visiting this idiot in a padded room."

"Yeah, thanks Mest… I mean, Doranbolt… I mean…"

"Just pick one!" he snapped. Ten years! It had been ten years since he had revealed his true identity and people were still indecisive about what to call him. Would it ever end?! He just didn't care what they called him anymore, as long as the same person just stuck to the same thing once and for all. "Anyway, it was nothing," he went on, recomposing himself. "Just be more careful next time, Natsu. So, if you don't need anything else from me, I'll be on my way."

"Of course! We owe you one," Lucy said as he started to retreat.

"Hey, Lucy, are you sure it was a good idea to bring this guy into a school? You know what people say about him and kids…" Natsu said, in a tone not quite low enough for Mest/Doranbolt not to hear.

"I am not a pedophile!" the man in question protested from the end of the hall, causing a passing mother with two children to rush past him extremely fast while bodily shielding her offspring from his presence. " _I'm not!_ "

Lucy elbowed her husband. "Don't give him grief after he's just saved your bacon."

"I'm just saying…" he mumbled. "Shady…"

She rolled her eyes – said by the guy whose brother was the most infamous character in history. "You're an idiot…"

"Yeah… Zeref seems to think so too."

 **The End**


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